If you need local publicity, and you live in one of 19 states in the United States, or the District of Columbia, Patch.com is almost begging for your pitch.

A memo from Patch editor-in-chief Brian Farnham outlines a plan to increase traffic by increasing article production.

Patch currently requires every site to post a minimum of four times per day, but many are not. Hence, the memo.

Patch covers California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

It loves news about new businesses, community events, local government, crime, items for the events calendar, columns from local residents and government officials, news tips, and the all-important and often overlooked photos and videos.

This is the perfect time to pitch Patch for another reason.  AOL Inc, which owns Patch, is launching 33 sites in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, key states that play an early role in the U.S. presidential election.

How to Pitch Patch

1. Build a relationship with Patch writers and editors. Spend time at the Patch site for your community, and identify who is responsible for your local news. The editor’s name and email address is under the logo at the top of the page.
2. Email the editor and ask questions. I’ve found Patch writers to be incredibly helpful and friendly.
3. Many Patch writers are former journalists. And all journalists love to report news first. Keep Patch in mind when hear a newsy item about something in your community.
4. Add Patch to your media database. Every time you write a press release, ask if the content is something that Patch would like.
5. Is your business doing something new? It’s much easier to get business stories onto Patch than it is to get your story told in your local business journal, which usually requires multiple sources.
6. Don’t forget about stand-alone photos with captions, and video. (See How to Use Photos & Graphics in a Publicity Campaign)

One of the other reasons Patch is such a super tool in a publicity campaign is because people can sign up for the Patch newsletter in their community, and receive email alerts.  I’ll often stop what I’m doing when I see the Port Washington/Saukville (Wisconsin) newsletter arrive in my Inbox.

What kind of publicity have you gotten from Patch? Do you have any pitching tips to add to my list?

Here’s another website to add to your media list consider if you want publicity for local news.

It’s Patch.com and it already covers more than 600 communities and neighborhoods in California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

The site, owned by AOL and based in New York, hires professional journalists and contracts with freelancers to cover local news and events, business and government, police and fire news, and more.  Users can submit their own announcements, photos and reviews, and participate in discussions.

Here are Patch’s AdvantagesThese have been mentioned in several articles I’ve read the last few weeks, including this one in today’s L.A. Times.

• It hires experienced journalists, many of whom have been laid off by local newspapers and are already familiar with the communities they cover.
• Patch makes it easy to find whoever covers your community.  Just go to Patch and click on the state where you live, then choose the community where Patch already has a presence.  Contact information for every Patch editor is at the top of every local site.  All Patch contributors can be contacted via email through the local site.
• It encourages participation.  Send a news tip, put an event on the calendar or submit an announcement.  If you’re a business owner who wants to be listed,  just email them. Update: Submit information yourself via the “add it!” button at the bottom of directory search.”
• It fills a void, created by the demise of many local newspapers.

Here are the Disadvantages

• It pays many journalists far less than what they made before, and Some editors have suffered from burnout and left. Update: Janine Iamunno, senior communications director for Patch, said 3 out of 4 Patch employees make  more money, or the same, as in their previous position.
• Critics say it can strangle many other smaller local websites.  But I think competition helps, not hurts, the news consumer.
• It needs to make enough money to support all those journalists, and it’s growth might be too aggressive.

But you won’t hear me complaining.

Do Your Research

Most important: Local means local!  The focus is very specific—news about the community or neighborhood served by the Patch site.

A smart Publicity Hound will want to develop story ideas that are directly related to a Patch.com community.  As always, take the time to review each site before developing the pitch.  Better yet, introduce yourself to the Patch editor.

If you have experience with getting news placed on Patch, or you have other comments to add, share them here.

If you’re a blogger and you’re covering news events in New York City, you’re now able to obtain a press pass.

FishbowlNY reports that City Hall will now issue press passes to online journalists to cover events where the public is denied access.

Under the proposed new rules, an applicant must show that he or she has covered, in person, six news events where the city has restricted access, within the last two years. The new rules cover employees of traditional news organizations as well as self-employed journalists and others who report the news.  The new press card will be issued every two years.

I’ve written before about phony press passes, used mostly by freeloaders trying to get into events for free food and entertainment.

New York City’s decision is a huge victory for bloggers, even though it resulted after a lawsuit. Let’s hope other cities extend the same courtesy.

Not everyone agrees. Twitterer @Bert_deVolontat calls it “a lack of respect for professionals.”

What do you think? Should bloggers and other online journalists receive press passes?

How does your organization deal with this issue? Do you let bloggers attend for free? How do you ferret out the phony journalists from the legitimate ones?

If you’re unemployed and desperate, it’s time to muster a little creativity, stage a kick-butt publicity stunt, and call on your LinkedIn connections to help land the perfect job.

Enter Beverly Shepard, who has been job-hunting for 16 months and jobless since January when The Virginia-Pilot newspaper eliminated her job as marketing manager and her entire department.

Here’s her offer: Find her a job and you could win up to $6,000.

That’s what she paid a professional search firm when she started job hunting. But the company failed to generate even one interview.

“I’ve paid strangers,” she said. “Why not pay my friends?”

On March 15, she emailed her more than 200 connections on LinkedIn with the offer. The fee is based on a percentage of the salary for the job Beverly accepts.

A $120,000 job pays 5 percent, or $6,000. An $80,000-a-year job pays 1 percent, or $800. She has placed several conditions on the offer. It applies only to full-time positions (40 hours with benefits) and she must actually accept and start work on the job.

She’s willing to move anywhere in the U.S. and she’s open to a wide range of jobs in marketing, business development or public relations.

LinkedIn email pays off

Within 15 minutes of emailing her LinkedIn connections, the leads started pouring in. When her friend, Publicity Hound Gail Kent of The Buzz Factory, heard about what she was doing, Gail offered to write a press release. That led to an avalanche of publicity.

The ABC affiliate in nearby Norfolk called for an interview. That sparked more publicity from FastCompany.com, BlogTalkRadio, TheEbonyNetwork.com and BlackAmericans.com. A friend who’s a college student posted the Norfolk TV interview on iReport.com, the citizen journalist website for CNN. The biggest media hit was an interview on CNN network news April 18.

“I’ve gotten so many leads, I’ve stopped counting,” Beverly says. “I’ve even heard from an old boyfriend who said he’ll keep his eyes open for jobs for me.”

So far, she’s had one job interview as a result of the “Woman for Hire, Will Pay for Work” campaign, and another interview later this month.

She has even heard from Kathryn Troutman, The Federal Resume Guru.

“Kathryn heard about my campaign, emailed me and said she’ll keep me in mind,” Beverly said.

LinkedIn, it turns out, is a super tool for job-hunters.  Scott Allen, a LinkedIn expert who I interviewed last year during a teleseminar on How to Promote Anything on LinkedIn—Ethically & Powerfully, said connections are usually willing to help you promote something, even yourself, as long as they know you’re sincere and that you don’t abuse your relationship with them.
More about Beverly Shepard

Interested in promoting or hiring her? You might want to know:

• She has also worked for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Cox Enterprises, Inc.
• She’s the vice president of marketing for the American Marketing Association for the Norfolk, Va. area and the former president of the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists.
• She’s an award-winning marketer with 20 years in newspapers, and degrees in journalism and law from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Email her with leads.You can also find her on Facebook. Find her a job, and you’re in the money.

If you’re a member of your local chamber of commerce and the only thing you have to show for it is the receipt for your annual dues, don’t even think about dropping out.

Because you’re a smart Publicity Hound, you have an opportunity right at your fingertips to be a star in the organization and generate so much publicity for yourself that all the other members will be scratching their heads, wondering how in the world you’ve done it. Nonprofits, this applies to you, too.

Here’s what to do.

The next time the chamber has an event that the local media won’t cover, act like a reporter and cover it yourself. Buy an inexpensive Flip video camera and interview people at the event. (The camera shown in the photo above isn’t a Flip.)

If it’s a routine chamber breakfast meeting with a speaker, interview the speaker after the presentation for a segment of two to three minutes. At the same breakfast, create another short video. Ask the chamber president to provide a brief infomercial of upcoming chamber events like the annual golf outing or street festival.

At bigger events, like the annual awards banquet, interview the Business Person of the Year. If you really want to create a stir, choose a controversial topic that chamber members are buzzing about, like a proposed sales tax increase in your state. Interview one person on each side of the issue. You’ve just created two more videos.

Import the videos into your computer, which takes a minute or two, edit them, upload them to your website, give the chamber the links to the videos, and then watch what happens.

The chamber will probably email all its members and tell them to go to your website. Many of those members will share the links with their friends. The links will end up in the next chamber newsletter. And who knows where else.

Here’s the best part. You can offer that same videos to the local newspaper, magazine and TV and radio stations for use at their websites. Print media, in particular, are hungry for user-generated video, even if it’s of events that they’ve decided not to cover.

That’s what videographer John Easton does in Charlotte, North Carolina. He covers local business events and uploads them to his blog, or to his own streaming video channel, sort of like his own TV station, and then he offers the video to local media.

Too busy to fuss with all these details?

John says every community is teaming with people who you can hire for next to nothing to shoot and edit the video for you. He explained how to find them when he was a guest on a teleseminar I conducted recently on “9 Clever Ways to Use Video to Become a Publicity Darling in Your Industry or Community.”

If you’re not a member of a chamber of commerce, you can still cover events in your community and submit the video to local media that are hungry for user-generated content.

John Easton of Charlotte, North Carolina asks:

“My new web video portal, Broadcast Charlotte, features local small business events, and I would like some help from your Hounds on how to generate my own publicity for it.

“Broadcast Charlotte provides on-demand video coverage of a variety of small-business events, from grand openings trade seminars. We want to attract not only small business owners, but anyone whose busy schedule keeps them from  missing important local business news.”

What’s behind that four-star rating of a restaurant review at your favorite foodie website? Diners can’t always know for sure. 

That’s because as online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are offering bloggers complimenary meals to get good write-ups, explains an article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

In fact, publicists across the restaurant industry are now including bloggers and food website forum hosts on their media lists, and regularly inviting them to opening parties, free meals and other events.

Bribery? Maybe.

But companies have been sending free samples of their products to the traditional media for years, hoping for good reviews. And reaching out to influential bloggers is now a key component to almost any publicity campaign. With restaurants, however, the difference is that when you’re dealing with bloggers, you might have to suffer in silence if they write a bad review.

That’s because some bloggers don’t allow comments at their blogs. A bad review can live online forever, with no opportunity for the restaurant to write a rebuttal. If a restaurant gets a bad review in a newspaper or magazine, however, it has several options such as submitting a letter to the editor.

If you want to invite bloggers to your food-related event, by all means do. But understand that:

—Most writers don’t have to abide by ethics policies like the ones that are in place at many newspapers and magazines. Traditional food reviewers usually try to dine anonymously and pay their own way to ensure that the review reflects the way average customers can expect to be treated. If a restaurant invites a blogger to dine, chances are good that the steak might be a little bigger than the steaks served to regular patrons.

—Unlike traditional food reviewers, bloggers don’t have to fact- check their reviews.

—Bloggers love to link to each other. That means one lousy review can find its way onto other blogs and into discussion forums.

The advantage, of course, is that consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to research products and services before they buy. One glowing review can bring droves of diners to your restaurant.

The Wall Street Journal article also mentioned that some food blogs and discussion forums are policing each other. Eater.com, for example—which discusses gossip on the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco restaurant scenes—tips off readers if it suspects that restaurant owners or employees wrote postings about their own restaurants at other blogs or food sites. Eater highlights those postings in a section called “Adventures in Shilling.”

Reach out to bloggers, but cover the all the bases with traditional media, too, by being proactive and trying to generate more than just food reviews. During the teleseminar “Publicity Tips for Restaurants, Chefs & Foodies,” which I conducted with Jaime Oikle of The Restaurant Report, I discussed the importance of tipping off food writers to food and restaurant trends.  Suggest profile stories about your chefs. Pitch story ideas on how you recruit and retain employees. And don’t forget to tie into regional and national breaking news events.

I wrote about how I loved the very clever Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest sponsored by Cheap-Chic-Weddings.com.

And the publicity just keep on coming.  Website owners Susan Bain; her mother, Roxie Radford; and sister, Laura Gawne tell me that Hanah Kim, the 2007 winner, and her dress will be featured on “The Martha Stewart Show” tomorrow.

That’s not all. Susan, Roxie and Laura also say that Charmin has invited them to participate in a giant event in New York City this fall.

As I’ve mentioned in my ebook “How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound,” a clever contest can generate months and sometimes even years of publicity. You don’t have to spend big bucks promoting it. Sometimes all it takes is getting in front of a few influential bloggers with your message, or writing and distributing an online press release like the Cheap-Chic-Wedding women did. Their entire campaign cost them only $200.

If you want to learn how to write and distribute your own press releases, take my free email course “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.”

Today’s issue of USA Weekend includes details on how your company, nonprofit, government agency, social club or neighborhood group can participate in Make a Difference Day on Oct. 27, the annual Saturday set aside to make a difference in your community.

How? Paint a building, pick up litter, help at a home for the elderly, refurbish a community center, plant flowers in the park or any other good deed that makes a difference. 

If you’re participating, be sure to let your local newspapers and TV stations know. They often cover these events because you are the “local angle” to the national story. Also, create video of your good deeds and post to YouTube and to your website. If TV stations won’t cover your volunteer efforts, submit the video anyway to your local TV stations.

This year, USA Weekend is giving volunteers a chance to win a vacation and save sea turtles in Costa Rica, teach English in Vietnam or help out at an orphange in Russia. Simply keep a photo diary of the day’s activities, then submit one picture that best illustrates your Make a Difference Day giving. A selection committee will pick one winner (and guest) to go on a paid volunteer vacation to the destination of his or her choice through Travelocity’s Travel for Good Program.   

Make sure the photo doesn’t look amateurish. See “How to Use Photos & Graphics in Your Publicity Campaign.” 

If you’re trying to pitch the Charlotte Observer with your business story, first watch this short interview with business editor Patrick Scott. 

It’s courtesy of videographer John Easton, who will be providing videos of other Charlotte-area journalists, complete with their own tips, at a website called Broadcast Charlotte. (What a great way for John, a citizen journalist, to call attention to his own company, Eastonsweb Multimedia!)

The business editor offered a piece of advice that every business owner or PR person should follow, regardless of which media they are pitching. Put the story about your business, or your client’s business, into context, by explaining how it’s part of a larger story or issue.

For example, let’s say you opened a scrapbooking shop, and you wanted to call attention to the grand opening. The media don’t care about grand openings. But they would care about the opening of a local business that’s part of a $4.25 billion (and growing) industry. If the owner included in her pitch the fact that there are about 32 million scrapbookers in the U.S., that would make the story more enticing because a journalist would see it not only as a grand opening, but as “the local angle” to a national story.

Hint: Use the phrase “the local angle” when you pitch. (See “How to Use Business Journals to Tell Your Story.”)      

If you’re a Charlotte-area business, bookmark John’s site, and don’t forget to let him know about your own local news. The site is an online video channel devoted to educational content for small businesses and event coverage of the kind of grassroots business news that many major media don’t want to bother covering. Event coverage includes local grand openings, seminars, new product announcements and related content.

If you’re a busines owner in any city who’s finding it difficult to come up with story ideas to pitch, download a free sample chapter of my ebook “How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound.” You’ll get lots of ideas for both print and broadcast media.